Wotton's aces are key for Wave

Thursday

Sep 29, 2011 at 3:15 AM

By John Doylejdoyle@fosters.com

DOVER — It's not hard to win a volleyball match when the bulk of your points are scored via the other team's errors. But Molly Wotton put on an impressive serving display and helped lift the Dover High School volleyball team to a 3-1 win over Manchester Central on Wednesday night in Division I action at Ollie Adams Gym.

"She did a great job tonight," Dover coach Colleen Harte said. "Her jump serve is obviously impressive, and it's not always consistent. So to have her come up and do that many tonight just goes to show she can do it when she needs to."

Wotton made 12 aces from behind the service line on the night, with 11 of those coming in the first game, won by the Green Wave 25-9. Dover cruised through the second game as well, winning 25-6, but hit a road block in the third as Central prolonged the match with a 25-22 win.

"We thought since we already had won two, the third game would come easy," Wotton said. "We do that a lot. Communication was the No. 1 thing, people not moving to the ball."

Wotton also finished with a team-high 10 kills, one of which was a thunderous spike to the back corner of Central's court to win the match, as Dover clinched the fourth game 25-10 to improve to 7-3 on the season.

"We tell them to maintain their game regardless of the level of competition they're facing," Harte said. "Which is hard to do as you saw in Game 3. We tried to change things up a little, give some other kids a chance to play, things like that. We just kind of broke down in a couple of places, like communication."

Central fell to 0-9 and has won just four sets all season. The three Manchester high schools — Central, West and Memorial — are a combined 0-27 this season and occupy the bottom three slots in the D-I standings, according to the NHIAA web site. Memorial has won two games and West none. Central's coach was not available for comment.

For Dover, Kylee Hardy made 22 assists in her first varsity start. Abby Harte made four kills.

Dover's biggest concern now is stringing three solid sets of volleyball together.

"We played really well at first, then after the third game we really came back and didn't let our energy fall," Dover sophomore Megan Priester said. "So that was good. We just want to keep our energy high, stay focused and play well together as a team."

Dover's next scheduled match is on Friday at Nashua North, one of to other teams the Green Wave are tied with for sixth place in the D-I standings. The other is Goffstown, whom Dover is scheduled to host on Oct. 19. Merrimack is in first place at 10-0. Dover visits the Tomahawks on Oct. 12.

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